


The Art of Choosing

by Paradise_of_Mary_Jane



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Soulmate AU, Soulmate Switching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-24 00:44:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12001377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paradise_of_Mary_Jane/pseuds/Paradise_of_Mary_Jane
Summary: “James,” she says. “I want this to be my choice.”“Like I said, you don’t have to decide right now.” James leans forward, eyes hooded. “May I?”First the dreams, then the Switch. Lily's not sure what's supposed to happen afterwards. She's not sure she wants to find out.





	The Art of Choosing

**Author's Note:**

> written for the hogwartshousenetminibang  
> thank you to to [@karkaroff](karkaroff.tumblr.com) for looking this over! You're amazing :DD  
> Also [@aibus](aibuspotter.tumblr.com) made a gorgeous edit for this piece. You should check it out [here](http://aibuspotter.tumblr.com/post/164978062661/hogwartshousesnet-mini-bang-event-fanfic)

_ Lily dreams of running. _

_ She dreams of her heart pounding in her chest, legs burning, arms wrapped tight around her body. There’s a hand reaching out, guiding her, welcoming her. It’s hard to catch her breath, hard to see anything past the burning of her eyes. She keeps running and running and running, knowing deep in her heart that she can’t do anything to stop it. _

_ (Does she want to stop it? Does she want it to end? She doesn’t know. _

_ Desire and will and everything else in-between are so easy to lose in the midst of the cataclasm happening around her.) _

_ The trees around her are tall and familiar, towering over her like silent guardians. The earth is soft underneath her feet. She breathes in the fresh air she knows she’s known her entire life. She knows this place better than she knows herself, knows the sound of grass crumbling under her feet, the snap of each twig, the scent of each flower that hangs in the air. There are birds singing and she feels freer than she’s ever been in her entire life. _

_ Her legs keep moving. She keeps running. _

_ She catches a glimpse of hazel ahead of her and breathes out. There is a hand reaching out, warm and welcoming and familiar. She is running towards it. _

_ She’s running home. _

 

\--

 

The dreams start when you’re around seventeen, or at least for half of the population. No one really knows how to define them, how to connect them to the Switch, but that’s where everyone agrees it starts: the dreams.

The other half has no choice but to wait until the Switch happens. For the lucky ones, it happens before they even come of age. Sometimes, it doesn’t happen until they’ve lived decades of their lives. Sometimes, it happens as they’re taking their last breaths. No one knows how it happens, and no one really knows why, either. It’s fitting that every one of them has to live with their own brand of confusion and uncertainty.

Soulmates, a lot of people whisper, mostly the ones who grew up around muggles, but it’s never really said out loud. It’s a muggle concept and their kind are not fond of admitting that muggles could have gotten  _ some things  _ right, especially since it doesn’t even happen to them. The Switch only happens to Magicalfolk, so it’s supposed to be theirs to define and name as they wish. So obviously, with all the creativity that the Magical World has been blessed with, they decide to simply call it The Switch.

No one really bothers trying to explain it, though. No one tries to explain why it happens to them and not the muggles, or why it happens in the first place. It just  _ is  _ for most of them. It must mean something but no one’s really tried to figure out exactly why. The Wizarding World prefers magic and mystery to… well, to anything, really.

Soulmates are the romantic guess; there are a lot less romantic ones. And there are people who don’t even bother with guessing at all.

James’ father started dreaming on his eighteenth birthday, on the verge of graduating out of Hogwarts. His mother hadn’t even been seventeen at the time. They’d already been together for months before it happened. They switched a day before her seventeenth birthday.

(“It’s hard to describe,” his father says when James asks about the dreams. “It’s different for everybody. But I remember feeling terrified.”

“Terrified?”

“Happy and excited, too, but mostly terrified. I was heading towards something I couldn’t see, something I didn’t even know. It felt like I had no control over what was happening. I remember being a bit angry, too. It feels like the world was slipping out from my grasp.”)

The Switch hadn’t changed anything for the two of them. His parents had been raised in the Wizarding World, where no one would let something as trivial as magic tamper with their own plans. They loved each other, and would have likely continued loving each other, Switch or no Switch.

James can’t help but hope he was that lucky; to dream and have that person already within arm’s reach and not averse to kissing you. It’s the only way to return to their own bodies, and then…

And then.

No one’s really bothered to figure out what happens after, either.

(There’s a strange branch of the Magical World who decided to just… never switch back, for some reason. As far as anyone can tell, there aren’t any side effects to doing it, so the Ministry can’t really stop them from doing it. Still, James can’t imagine why anyone would want to stay in another person’s body for the rest of their lives.)

They don’t really get a choice in what they dream about, and when they Switch, but there’s no rule on what they have to do after. Magicalfolk are used to unexplainable things happening in their lives, they’re not really one to romanticize them.

They’re not for romanticizing anything, really.

James, well… Romance is the only thing James has, sometimes. Romance, the thrill of knowing that something means more than it what he sees, is what’s keeping him going. It’s what makes things worth doing.

Meaning is so often hard to find. James knows better than to look for it.

For some time now, James has taken to meeting Lily at the Entrance Hall before breakfast, and Lily, to everyone’s surprise, is astoundingly alright about it. He’s not sure what that’s supposed to mean. He’s not sure if it’s supposed to mean anything at all.

There’s something happening between the two of them, ever since the start of their sixth year. A conversation happened, and another one followed after that, something that neither of them expected. They’ve never really been enemies, although they’ve had their disagreements, but they’ve never quite been friends either. They kept to themselves, mostly, with no reason to cross each other’s paths. They’ve never really known how to deal with each other; the two of them too vibrant that they can’t help but blind each other.

Until now. Now there’s… An odd thing blooming between them that has James’ heart fluttering in his chest and a blush creeping up his cheeks.

(He blushes much too easily, whenever Lily is concerned.)

It’s something that’s almost impossible to define, but it’s a good something, James thinks. They’re a little less awkward around each other, their laughter less stilted. Age has mellowed the both of them, and now they’re moving towards something more.

Well, James has always been a romantic. He knows better than to ask, but he’s also incredibly adept at hoping.

His face splits into a wide smile the moment he sees Lily bounding down the stairs to the Entrance Hall. It’s nearing the end of January, the air still frigid enough to require coats and scarves for their second Hogsmeade visit of the year. Visits to Hogsmeade lose their charm for a lot of older students, but never for James. He’d never really done well locked inside castle walls.

“Hello James.” Lily has a wide smile on her face, as well, her long red hair pulled up into a messy bun. Her face seems paler than what James is used to, but that could just be the cold. Her green eyes are sparkling. She looks as eager to get out of the castle as James feels. “Have you been waiting long?”

“Not long,” James says. “And I don’t mind. It’s a very important day, after all.”

Lily’s smile widens. “Is that so?”

“Don’t tell me you forgot? Shameful Lily, truly shameful. Well, we’ll just have to remedy that, won’t we? Accompany me to Hogsmeade?” James playfully holds out an arm.

(This is how it’s supposed to go: Lily will laugh, and shove James away whilst latching onto the arm and they’ll go to Hogsmeade together, full of laughter and talking about everything and nothing in particular.

Friendships are about forming and learning habits; an intricate dance with music that only the two of them can hear. The two of them have spent months learning this, and dancing around each other until they can move closer, one small step at a time. The dance goes on and on until it becomes something a little more. Until they both agree to let it.

You know something’s wrong when the habit breaks; when someone is just slightly off-beat.)

This is how it actually goes: Lily falls still, staring into James’ eyes with wide eyes, no trace of sparkle in sight. Her face has white, and the smile on her face becomes fixed.

James swallows, the smile slipping off his own face. What had he done wrong?

“Lily?”

Lily shakes her head, and just like that, it’s like a spell breaking. The tension drains out of her body. She takes James’ arm and the sparkle doesn’t quite return to her eyes but her smile looks a little more real. Like she’s waking up from a dream.

She doesn’t laugh, though. There’s an almost grim set to the way she raises her chin.

“Let’s go,” Lily says. She drags James away and towards the carriages that will take them to Hogsmeade. The air between them has thickened, pressing against them with more force than James likes;  _ it’s tense _ . It’s not just the awkwardness they used to have, it’s them at their worst fights, when their words are a little too cruel and a little too close to home.

It’s the air when they’re about to strike where it hurts the most.

(They weren’t friends before, and they were never enemies. But they were young together and people who were young together have their own ways of being cruel.)

“Is something wrong?”

Lily stares straight ahead as she answers, hand tightening painfully against James’ arm. “No,” she says. “Everything is perfectly fine.”

“Lily—“

“You have hazel eyes.”

“Yes. I do,” James says uncertainly. “Have you never noticed before?”

“I have,” Lily says. “I never noticed they were that shade, though.”

James doesn’t know what to say to that, so he remains silent. Lily doesn’t say anything more as they climb onto the horseless carriages. Her eyes linger on the reins and James knows better than to ask. You never ask why some people see the horses drawing the carriages and why some don’t.

James knows better than to wish that he did.

“Lily,” he says. “Please tell me what’s wrong.”

Her eyes stay on the reins as the carriages start to move. There’s a light snow falling, almost picturesque, like something out of a painting. It’s beautiful, really. James thinks that the two of them would have enjoyed it, at any other time. “Nothing,” she says. “Nothing at all.”

“Oh.” James looks down at his hands, twisting and twisting. His hands have always been nervous. “Alright. Well then. If you say so. Happy birthday, Lily.”

There’s a sharp noise that comes from Lily and James’ head snaps up. Lily is staring at him with a look he can’t decipher.

“Thank you,” she says. She raises her chin, as if fighting an invisible force. James watches her take a deep breath.

They don’t say anything else.

 

\--

 

_ The thing with running is, it has its own way of being terrifying. _

_ A pounding heart is common enough that it’s too easy to mistake it for something other than what it actually means.  Coupled with breathlessness and the distinct feeling she’s leaving something behind, it’s too easy to be scared, too easy to wonder what you’re running away from. _

_ “Where am I going?” she asks the wind. Her legs are burning from underneath her, just on the verge of giving out. It’s only a matter of time now. She wonders if it’ll be easier to give up. _

_ The hand is reaching out towards her. There is a flash of hazel and a smile warmer than the sun. “Come,” it seems to call to her. _

_ No, she thinks. Whatever this is, it’s worth the pain. _

_ She runs towards it and doesn’t look back. _

 

\--

 

Lily’s smile had been off ever since they left.

The sun is beginning to set now, strands of orange peeking out from behind the perpetually grey sky. They’d wandered through Hogsmeade side by side, going from one shop to another, but things had been completely wrong for the most of it. Their conversations were awkward, at best.

It feels as if they’re right back at the start, like everything they’d learned about each other in their tentative friendship has suddenly slipped from their grasps. James feels wrong-footed, like the ground had disappeared from under his feet.

They stop near the Shrieking Shack, just at the edges of the clearing. The sight of it makes James feel bolder than he actually is; the place always has a way of making him feel brave. He tries to take her hand, but Lily pulls away almost immediately. He tries very hard not to flinch.

Obviously, this is not the time for bold decisions.

“Do you really think there’s an evil spirit in there?” Lily asks.

James lets out a breath. He hopes it sounds like a laugh. “Probably.”

Lily snorts. Her hand is clenching and unclenching. The Shack is silent today, though that’s not surprising. A crescent moon is just beginning to appear out of the sky.

“What’s the matter, Lily? You seem sad.”

Lily shrugs, red hair bouncing on her shoulders. 

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s your birthday,” he says. “No one should be sad on their birthdays.”  _ Tell me how to make you happy, _ he desperately wants to say. There is something about Lily’s smiles, something about her laughter that he craves.

“Maybe that’s the problem.” Lily sighs, fists clenching. “It’s my birthday. I’m seventeen today.”

“Yeah?”

“It means a lot of choices I have to make, doesn’t it? I’m an adult now.”

There’s something in her tone that’s pleading him to ask and remain silent at the same time. A secret she wants to share, but maybe it’s too dangerous, maybe it’s something James doesn’t want to know. He reaches out but barely manages to restrain himself.

Lily will reach for him on her own, if she needs to.

“You don’t have to make them right away,” he says. “You’re not an adult for just a year. You have time to get them wrong, then you have time to get them right. You have all the time in the world.”

“I know that! It’s just—But what if I don’t—What if I—“ Her fists clench until her knuckles turn white, and her jaw tightens further. “What if I don’t like the choices I have? What if I don’t like where I am?”

James looks to the Shrieking Shack. A crescent moon hangs in the sky. He thinks of a moon much brighter than this one, bright enough to drown out all the stars.

“Then you find one that you like, you run with it, and you never let it go.”

Lily lets out a breath. She reaches for James’ hand. Her palms are a little damp, but the skin is strong and firm.

“I’m really glad you’re here, James,” she says. “I know it doesn’t seem it, but… I’m glad.”

James smiles slightly and leans into her touch. “I’m glad you let me be here.”

 

\--

 

_ When she was growing up, there was a field of flowers near her house, just at the edge of the forest. Her mother warned her not to go into the forest, but she never said anything about the field of flowers. It was beautiful. She’d spent days just lying on the grass, weaving flowers together. Sometimes she gave them to Petunia or her parents, sometimes she kept them for herself. Sometimes she lets them flow down the stream that cuts through the field, watching it disappear into the distance. _

_ The forest is dangerous, her mother says. Never go there. _

_ Lily goes to the forest anyway. _

_ Her steps were sure and steady, the way all seven-year-old steps are. The grass crunches from underneath her feet, and there are birds singing overhead. Trees tower above her on all sides, like silent guardians, protecting her from all the bad things her mother warned her about. Here she knows she’s safe, here she knows she’s home. _

_ At some point she starts running, though she can’t remember why, only remembers the burning need deep in her soul. Her legs aren’t as strong, her strides aren’t as big as they are now that she’s older, but she runs anyway, and her laughter hangs in the air like a warm blanket. _

_ There is a whisper lingering in the air, drawing Lily closer and closer to it. _

_ (No, wait, that’s not how the story goes. This isn’t— _

_ Dreams so very easily feel real and the other way around.) _

_ She hears a familiar murmur and catches sight of a warm shade of hazel. There are two arms, open and warm and welcoming, and Lily is running towards them. _

_ There are tears streaming down her face. She doesn’t know if they’re out of grief or joy. _

_ “I’m coming,” she thinks. ”For better and for worse, I’m coming.” _

 

\--

 

It takes two weeks for James to realize that he doesn’t really know what counts as a date or not.

Does something count as a date if neither of them actually asked the other out or not? It feels like a date. They do what Hogwarts students do for dates, at any rate. Go to Hogsmeade (literally the only place they can go that  _ isn’t  _ Hogwarts), get some butterbeer (literally the only thing James can legally drink that isn’t water or weird juices), walk hand in hand. Maybe go to some of the shops, look for fun things to do.

It’s also the same thing James does with his friends. They’ve done a lot more interesting things than that.

But it had been Lily’s seventeenth birthday and she’d spent it wandering through Hogsmeade with  _ him _ , hand in hand. She’d spent it with only James for company.

It had been her seventeenth birthday and she spent it with James. That had to mean something, right?

James really needs clearer definitions on what constitutes a date.

They’d been doing it more often, these past few weeks. Ever since that one birthday that could-or-could-not-be-a-date. It feels like they’re circling each other closer and closer. They take more walks, shoulders brushing together, heads bent over in whispers and laughter.

Lily is reaching towards him and James is helpless but to do anything but reach back. Their fingers are almost touching, a ghost of a distance between them. The dance is getting closer but not close enough for that _. _

Not yet.

They’re lying on the grass near the lake. It’s after hours but neither of them particularly care. Everyone’s snuck out after hours at least twice before they finish their second year. As long as they’re not caught, it’ll be fine.

Their hands are close enough to touch, if James would just reach out. The mere thought of it makes James blush to his roots. It’s probably dark enough that Lily doesn’t notice.

“James?” Lily’s voice is a quiet echo through the night air, soft and soothing at the same time.

“Yeah?”

“Tell me something,” she says. “Tell me a secret.”

James is silent for a moment. For a moment, he can only hear the breeze and their own careful breathing.

“What kind of secret?” 

“The kind that you wouldn’t tell anyone else.”

_ I think I’m falling in love with you, _ he thinks. Or maybe he already has. Maybe he’d been falling for long enough and now he’s finally finding his footing again.

He says, “I have a lot of pictures with this godawful hat when I was small. I tell people that it was a gift but really, it was worse. The first bit of accidental magic I did was when I was five and I accidentally turned my hair orange. No one could cut it or turn it back to brown for five months, hence the hat.”

Lily lets out a tiny laugh that sounds too much like bells. James’ heart feels as if it’s soaring.

“Do you ever want to go back?” she asks. “To that?”

“Well not really, no. I had terrible hair and none of my friends.” This is better, he thinks. Here and now, he is better.

“That’s not what I mean.”

“I had none of my friends,” James says. “I have a lot of things that I have that I didn’t have back then.”

“And you’ve lost lots of things, too, I imagine.”

“I don’t think so--I--What is this about, Lily?”

“You’ve never told anyone that?” Lily asks. Her eyes are trained on the stars. “About the hair thing?”

“No,” he says slowly. “Not even Sirius. And I swore my parents to secrecy. Which is the same thing I have to do to you I’m afraid.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Well, I suppose we’ll just have to end this.”

Lily bridges the distance between them, fingers brushing against James’ before entwining them together in a complicated tangle.

“And what is  _ this _ , James?” she asks, voice low. “What do we have to lose?”

“I uh—I—“

Their shoulders and thighs are brushing together and James’ brain is refusing to work. Lily is close enough that he can smell her breath on his skin, feel her hair brushing against his neck.

The stars above them are bright and moving, blinking to a careful beat that matches James’ heart.

“You’re not seventeen yet, are you?”

“No,” he says. It feels as if all the breath has been knocked out of his body. “No. I still have a month to go.”

“Pity.”

“Wha-why?”

Lily is suddenly on top of him, their noses brushing against each other.

“James,” Lily says. “What do you want?”

“This,” he says, breathless. “I want this. I want everything.”

A breath that sounds a lot like a laugh. “Me too,” she says.

And in the dark, James feels soft lips pressing against his. There’s a warm weight on his chest, hands entwined with his, and long red hair, tickling at the edges of his face.

 

\--

 

_ Reaching. What is she reaching for? What if she’s reaching for the wrong thing? _

_ Come to me, a familiar voice calls out. The hand is closer and she’s running towards it and it’s there, waiting for her, coming for her. _

_ She’s nearly there. Nearly home. _

 

\--

 

“Tell me about the Switch.”

The days after their first kiss are spent in dreamlike bliss. James feels as if he’s lost in a haze of his own emotions. It’s a lot of things: delight mostly, trepidation, desire, maybe a little fear, but something’s not worth doing if you’re not more than a little afraid of it. It feels like the moments in between wakefulness and sleep, when he’s slowly sinking into the soft arms of a dream he didn’t know he had.

“What about it?”

Lily puts her chin on her hand, contemplative. She’s staring into the common room fire, eyes lost in thought. Her other hand is absently tracing patterns onto James’ leg. They’re close enough that James can easily close the distance between them, but he doesn’t need to. They have time enough for that.

“Is it true what they say?” she asks. “Does it really mean you’re soulmates?”

“Depends on what you mean by soulmate,” James says.

“You know what I mean.”

“No one really knows anything about the Switch. But if you mean soulmates as in the love of your life that you should marry immediately, then no, I don’t think that’s what it is.”

“Your parents Switched, didn’t they? And then they got married.”

James nods. “Yeah. But a lot of people don’t.” He doesn’t quite know how to say that it doesn’t matter. That love is love, and they’ve lived with magic their entire lives to buy into the idea that an unexplainable event can define their choices. “A lot of people Switch, kiss, then move on as if nothing happened. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“Is that all?” Lily asks. “It has to mean something, doesn’t it? You’re being brought together for a reason.”

“Well yes, you were, but no one really knows what it’s supposed to mean. I think you have to come up with that reason on your own.” Magicalfolk are a stubborn bunch; they don’t like being told what to do.

“And what about you? What do you think the reason is?”

James bites his lip. He doesn’t know the answer to these questions; never asked them to begin with. The Switch is a constant in his life, the way magic and Quidditch and Gryffindor is. It’s just there. No one bothers questioning constants.

“I don’t know,” he says after a pause. “I think that… I think it means  _ something. _ It’s a connection, and magic is all about connections, isn’t it? More than spells and potions, it’s figuring out how a wizard connects with their wand, how love can stop a curse, how debts can be repaid. Not trying to understand it is going to a duel blindfolded, so you have to understand part of it, but it’s not something you can fully define, either. Magic is… Well, it’s magic, isn’t it? Part of it is just a mystery, no matter how hard you try. Some parts of it are impossible to predict. It just… Well, it just exists.”

“That’s…” Lily’s fingers tangle with James’ own. “How do you live with that?”

James shrugs. “You just do,” he says. “Now what’s all this talk about soulmates, anyway?”

“Nothing… It’s nothing, just… I just turned seventeen, you know?”

He falls still. There’s something about the way she said it, too careful, too deliberate. Lily is staring into the fire, pointedly not looking at him.

“Have you been having dreams?” he asks.

Her grip on his hand tightens. “Maybe,” she says.

“Oh.”

“I don’t know what it means. Muggles never had this kind of thing.”

“It can mean anything you want, or it can mean nothing at all. That’s on you.”

“And what if it means something more to the person I Switch with?”

“Well, you say that you don’t feel the same way and then you talk it out and the two of you come to a compromise. And if that doesn’t work, I’m pretty sure you know the appropriate hex to inflict on them.”

James looks down at Lily’s hands. Strong and firm and utterly unshakable. He’s lucky to be the one holding them right now. “Most people don’t marry the person they Switch with. A lot of them don’t even stay in contact. Some don’t even bother learning the other person’s name. It only matters if you let it.”

“It feels like a curse,” she says. “Like I’m being forced to do something.”

“No one can force you to do anything,” he says. “Not if you resist hard enough.”

Lily laughs, bitter. Her hand is tangled into his, nails digging into his skin.

“Sometimes I wish I was never a witch.” Words said in a whisper; a confession.

“You’ve always been a witch,” he says quietly. He rubs gentle circles on the palm of her hand. “Whether you knew it or not. Whoever you were before you came to Hogwarts, you haven’t lost that, either.”

A laugh that sounds like something else, something opposite. “Is that so?”

“You’re Lily,” he says. “You’re already perfect. Nothing in the world can ever change that. Not even magic.”

Lily smiles; a little watery, a little shaky, but a smile. She takes his hand and presses a kiss to his knuckles. “You’re unreal. It’s just--How--How do you always know how to make me smile?”

“I try. It takes a lot of practice.” Learning how to make her smile is no chore. James loves seeing her smile, loves the way her eyes crinkle at the corners, and her lips part as if in surprise. James wants to learn every part of her, wants to bask in her delight and be the one to wipe away her tears.

It’s selfish, but he thinks he may want every single part of her for himself.

 

\--

 

_ “Come.” Lily takes the hand. It’s warm and soft. The voice is soothing. “Rest.” _

_ She closes her eyes and lets out a breath. The journey had been long and hard but she’s here now. _

_ Finally, finally, she’s home. _

  
  
  
  
  
  


{ {

 

_ There has been little research on the phenomenon commonly known as The Switch. It is an event that has baffled Magical Scholars since the beginning of documented scholarship.  _

_ The greatest mystery regarding this phenomenon is the lack of intentionality to cause it. As any magical student learns in their first years of education, intent is one of the most important factors in any facet of magic. Even the early manifestations of accidental magic in children stems from their intent to achieve or acquire something. In more mystical, vague, and colloquial terminology, ‘You only achieve something if you want it hard enough.’ _

_ Because of this trait that magic seems to have, some Scholars hypothesize that the Switch occurs from a deep, sometimes completely undefined, desire within a person’s mind, leading them to the person they switch with. What is this desire? It can be anything: a sense of belonging, understanding, a companion, perhaps even a rival or an enemy; something that is not easily tangible or achievable, much less definable. This desire seems to trigger a part of a witch or wizard’s magic that leads them to the person who may be able to provide this need. _

_ Most of this is, of course, pure speculation, as Magical Scholars are still at a loss on how to measure quantifiable data on the subject matter. At any rate, The Switch is classified as Old Magic, and if there’s one thing all Magical Scholars agree on, is that Old Magic has proven to be one of the most difficult aspects of Magical studies and that most of it will remain a mystery, at least for several more lifetimes. _

_ \--Excerpt from Mathilda Missinome’s  _ On the Study of Magic and Other Related Phenomena

 

} }

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Lily wakes up in a body that’s not hers.

She knows it from the moment she opens her eyes. The body she’s in is too long, too lanky. There is something distinctly unfamiliar about the way her arms are draped over her now flat chest. Her hair is too short, too, just a few brown strands peeking out from under her neck.

This is it, she thinks. The Switch.

She takes a few deep breaths, one after the other, trying to calm herself down. It doesn’t work. Her heart is beating too fast in her chest and she’s feeling something almost akin to panic. She doesn’t know why she’s… Scared. Yes, scared. That’s the word for it. 

She doesn’t know why she feels so scared. She’d known it would happen, had known from the first flash of hazel. She had known what was going to happen and she’d been preparing for it for so long now. She should have been ready.

It was him. It could have only been him.

She’s really not ready for this.

She slowly climbs out of James’ bed. He sleeps without a shirt on, which doesn’t make her blush as must as it probably should. It’s hard when it’s her own body she’s looking down on. It feels a lot less awkward that way, like she’s in a badly fitting dress instead of another person’s body. Her limbs aren’t quite right, too loose in some places and too tight in others. She blinks several times, trying to get used to her vision before she remembers that right, James wears glasses.

Lily finds all of this incredibly troubling.

“Oi Potter, get out of bed,” a voice rings out from… the bathroom, she thinks. The male dormitories are nearly identical with the female ones. “You better be up by the time I come there. We’re nearly late!”

She bites her lip. James and his friends are infamous for having a backup plan for everything. Do they have a backup plan for when one of them Switches? They probably do but she probably doesn’t want to know.

Well, it’s better than the alternative. It’s always nice to have a plan of action.

“I’m not James,” she calls out. His voice is much deeper than what she’s used to, which, it makes sense because James’ voice is much deeper than hers. She doesn’t know why she’s surprised.

Everything that’s happening is expected and completely logical in the Magical World. She’s been here for six years; none of this should be surprising her.

“What do you mean you’re not—“

Sirius walks out of the bathroom, with only a towel around his waist. By this point, a terrifying calm has settled on Lily. Her breathing has evened out and she’s not panicking. She’s scared, but she’s not panicking. Or she’s panicking but her way of panicking is to pointedly ignore the way her heart has climbed to her throat.

“This isn’t funny,” Sirius says. “Stop playing and get dressed. We’re already running late.”

“I’m not James,” she says again. “We uh—We Switched.”

Sirius stares.

“I’m Lily,” she says.

“You’re joking.”

“I’m really not. We should probably… We should probably go get him so we can… talk.”

Sirius’ head snaps up. He shakes his head and the shock clears from his eyes. “We should—Yeah. I’ll just get dressed. You should too.” His eyes rake over her, cold and critical. Lily flushes but manages to stand her ground.

He heads over a closet and opens it, absently searching through it. His hand emerges with an undershirt and he throws it at Lily’s head. Lily barely manages to catch it.

“Do you--uh--Do you have a plan if one of you Switches?”

“We do, but it was shit so we scrapped it. We’re in an uncharted territory now, I’m afraid.” Sirius turns to her, eyes grim.

“That’s going to have to do for now,” he says. “How do you feel?”

“Like I’m in another person’s body.”

Sirius rolls his eyes.

“You and James deserve each other, honestly.”

“You’re seventeen aren’t you?” Lily asks. “Have you gotten any Dreams, yet?”

Sirius shrugs. “I’ve already Switched, actually. It wasn’t fun, and like I said, our plan was shit. Get dressed. James is probably already waiting in the Common Room.”

And he walks back into the bathroom, leaving Lily to her own devices.

Lily sighs, pulling the shirt over her head. She’s not quite panicking anymore, but she’s not quite calm either.

 

\--

 

James, true to Sirius’ word, is already in the Common Room.

His (her??) arms are behind his back, still in pyjamas. Lily’s body is rocking on the balls of her feet, green eyes flitting everywhere in mild panic. James’ arms twitches like it’s resisting the urge to run a hand through his hair. Lily doesn’t think she’s noticed how much James actually moved until she saw it in another body. It had just been another part of him at the time.

Sirius takes one look at him, fidgeting in Lily’s body, and rolls his eyes. The Common Room is as empty as it could get so close to class time, which is about as empty as it could get.

“I’ll tell Moony and Wormtail that you’re skipping then, shall I?”

“That’d be great.” Her voice sounds odd, hearing it from another person’s ears. James’ accent has apparently carried over from his own body, his words sounding odd and lilting in strange places.

“James,” Lily says when Sirius has disappeared from the Common Room.

“Lily.” James swallows. He’s still wearing her pyjamas, fidgeting endlessly, like he’s not comfortable in her skin. It’s an odd look for someone like him, someone who’s always been so sure of himself and everything around him.

Lily feels odd. She feels very odd.

“We should,” she says, “we should go somewhere more private.”

“The Male dorms,” James says. “It’s empty now. I don’t think you can climb up to yours.”

“Alright.”

The awkwardness between them is nearly palpable. James keeps shooting her glances, like he expects her to say something. What was she supposed to say? She likes James, but she never wanted something like this. Never wanted to feel like the choice isn’t hers. It’s always going to be hanging over their heads; the feeling that what they have is something that doesn’t belong to them, but to something that brought them together by… reasons no one can understand.

James is different. He was raised a Wizard and Wizards have apparently stopped caring about the Switch a long time ago. It doesn’t mean anything to him, just another mystery to add to the plethora that the Wizarding World already has.

Lily is muggle-born. It’s been six years and she’s still getting used to the idea that magic exists. She’s still wrapping her head around the fact that she can have impossible things with a wave of her wand, hell she’s still trying to get used to the fact that she  _ has  _ a magic wand.

All her life, she’d been trying to understand everything around her. Magic never let her do that, encouraged her to do the opposite. There was something about being a witch that was ultimately unknowable.

It all feels very unreal.

“I meant what I said, you know,” James says quietly. He opens the door to the dormitory and waits for Lily to step inside before following suit. “You get to decide what this means.”

“And what if I decide this means we should stay as far away from each other as possible?”

James flinches. Lily’s tone was harsher than she intended. She’s not used to speaking through another person’s voice.

“Then I’ll be disappointed,” he says. “And we’ll stay as far away from each other as possible. It’s not like we haven’t done this before.”

It’s Lily’s turn to flinch. Perhaps there’s something about being in each other’s bodies that makes them unnecessarily cruel.

“Doesn’t this mean anything to you?” Lily demands. “What do you want to do?”

“That doesn’t matter,” James says.

“Of course it does. This Switch--it means something different for you. What do you want it to mean?”

“It means a lot of things for me,” James says. “And nothing at the same time. It’s not a big deal, alright? It happens to everyone. Look, let’s just kiss and be done with it. I’d rather not skip class.”

“No wait—No.” Lily shakes her head, fists clenching. She’d known what the dreams meant, and she knows what she feels about them. She doesn’t know if they’re real. She doesn’t know how to say that she doesn’t know what she wants. “Can we—Until sunset. Let’s wait until sunset.”

James immediately perks up. “And then?”

“And then…”

James smiles. It’s not a smile Lily is used to seeing on her face; softer, kinder. She doesn’t think she has it in her to be like that.

“Let’s go,” James says softly. He takes her hand, or his depending on how you look at it, and presses a kiss to her knuckles.

He turns to leave.

“James?”

James turns back.

“I do love you. It’s just--I just--,” she says. James smiles. Lily realizes that this is the first time she’s said the words out loud.

“I know,” he says. “I love you too.”

 

\--

 

James takes her to the forest.

He holds her hand the entire way, steps unwavering as he follows a path only he can see. Lily’s never been to the Forbidden Forest before; she’d thought about it but ultimately, it hadn’t been worth the trouble. Too many stories lurking there and she’s not sure which were real and which weren’t. Obviously, James never had the same dilemma.

"You’ve been here before,” she says.

James flushes. Lily’s skin is much paler than James, the blush creeping much more easily from her cheeks and nose to her ears.

“I don’t think that’s something I should be admitting out loud,” he says. “Especially to a prefect.”

Lily laughs. She’s suddenly hit with the urge to kiss the tip of his nose. She’d been getting it a lot recently, but she’d hoped it would never be in these circumstances.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll keep your secret.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says. “Come on, we’re nearly there.”

He leads her to a small clearing and Lily stops in her tracks, breath catching in her throat. A field of flowers, in the middle of a forest. There’s a stream cutting through it, leading to a thicket of trees. There’s a lump in Lily’s throat and she has to blink past the tears in her eyes. When had she started crying?

“Lily?”

“Nothing. Sorry—It’s just… I had a place like this once, when I was young. When I was dreaming I thought… I thought I was dreaming of that, not… Not this.”

There’s a long silence. She’d thought she was going home, that she was running towards something familiar, to a place she’d known her entire life. But the air is different here, the scent of flowers slightly off, the trees aren’t guardians but bars of a cage, keeping her in a place she never asked to be in. It’s beautiful and magical and half out of a dream but half of her will never belong there. Half of her will always belong to that quiet countryside, hearing her mother’s voice echoing across a field of flowers.

She thought she was going home.

(Lily will forever be grateful for being a witch but sometimes… Sometimes, gratefulness can pave the way for regret.

She’s learned so many things, seen the most beautiful, awesome things, and holds magic at her fingertips. But it comes at a cost.

A whispered word.

A piece of herself chipped away and fallen into a chasm she cannot bridge. She straddles the line of who she was and who she is, and knows she cannot cross either way.

She looks up in a field of her childhood and realizes that she isn’t where she thought she was.)

James kneels at the patch of flowers, idly picking some daisies and weaving them together.

“Maybe they could be both,” he says. “Maybe it’s not either, or. Haven’t you thought that maybe you could belong to both? Here and there at the same time?”

Lily sits in front of him. It’s James’ words, words of someone who’s so sure of where he’s supposed to be, but said in her own voice. An echo of her thoughts, bouncing around her skull.

“I don’t understand,” she says.

“It’s magic, Lily,” he says. “You don’t have to understand it. Sometimes muggles give birth to witches and sometimes witches give birth to muggles. No one really knows why. Coming from another place doesn’t mean you belong here any less, it doesn’t mean you don’t belong there, either.”

“Then where am I supposed to go?”

He shrugs. “Wherever you want. No one can to stop you either way.”

Her breath catches in her throat. He makes it sound so simple and maybe it was. Maybe it could be simple, if Lily would let it.

(Choices are hard, but maybe she didn’t have to choose.

Maybe choosing to be is a choice in itself.)

“James,” she says. “I want this to be my choice.”

“Like I said, you don’t have to decide right now.” James leans forward, eyes hooded. “May I?”

Lily nods, feeling tears trace her eyes. She doesn’t know why she’s crying. It feels like a loss, like a part of herself has fallen away, reeking of childhood innocence. Somehow, the loss makes her breathe easier.

Soft lips press against hers. Lily closes her eyes and something in her chest loosens.

She opens them to see James, tear tracks on his face but with a soft smile on his lips. She’s kneeling in a field of flowers, holding a crown of daisies in her hand.

“Hello Lily,” he says. 

“Hello James,” she says.

She breathes in. It’s a choice in itself.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You have no idea how much trouble this fic gave me in pronouns.


End file.
